Especially with his disagreements with some of Kershner’s decisions, I doubt it. ESB went overbudget and he didn’t want that to happen again, which I’m guessing is partly why he had a tighter grip on ROTJ.
Yes that’s exactly the case.
I don’t agree with Kasdan’s take on ROTJ but I do think they blinked and if anything could truly be undone I would have wished Gary Kurtz never left, but that’s not really an idea so instead I’ll go with Leia really shouldn’t have been so sidelined in ROTJ.
I think the truth of the matter is having Kurtz around wouldn’t have changed much. Most of the issues present in ROTJ were brought up in the Lucas/Kasdan/Marquand/Kazanjian story meetings. The fact is that Lucas was calling the shots, and Kurtz would have ultimately acquiesced to him, same as the others (the reason TESB is great is because Kurtz basically let Kershner do what he wanted, not because he was keeping Lucas in check).
I’d want Marquand out too, no offense Marquand, but he was less of a creative drive whereas having Kurtz around just on set was another layer of someone who really did understand the story, certain silly things might have been averted but we’ll of course never know, and of course I still think ROTJ pulls it together by the end, just not quite firing on all cylinders to the degree I’d qualify the first two.
It’s kind of a chicken or egg thing though. If there was a better director with a stronger vision for the film (like Kersh for TESB), it would have been a better movie. But would Lucas have hired such a director?
After his falling out with the DGA over Kershner’s credit placement in ESB, a good number of directors he could have hired (like Spielberg) were unavailable to him.
While true, there was plenty of talent outside of the union, so Marquand wasn’t the only option.
Arguably were it not for Marquand’s lobbying, Lucas might have gone with someone who would have had a stronger vision and might have challenged him more. I mean, Lucas did pick Lynch first, before he turned him down. You could easily point out as well that Lucas’s co-directing on that movie was as much because of Marquand’s wishes as they were George’s - Marquand did request he be on set most shooting days after all, which Lucas had not planned to do.
So yeah, I guess I probably do wish the film had a better director (not that I hate what Marquand came up with).